No, Trump is not a fascist. But that doesn’t produce him any less hazardous | Jan-Werner Müller

Trump’s establisher chief of staff has fair validateed the ex-pdwellnt is a fascist. The establisher chairman of the joint chiefs of staff went on sign up saying the ex-pdwellnt is a fascist. Historians of the highest stature say he’s a fascist – shouldn’t all this be enough to end what has come to be understandn in the US as “The Fascism Debate” – a argue that has extfinished been acrimonious and unforeseeedly personal?

There’s no disconcurment among the participants in this argue that Trump must be stopped. Any yet disputes around the f-word have made leftists and liberals accumulate in a circular firing squad. Those using the fascism analogy have set up themselves strikeed for ignoring that all was not well with US politics before 2016; those refusing historical parallels are faulted for complacency. Yet it is perfectly possible to discover the tag fascism inappropriate (and possibly counterfruitful), without in any way minimizing the dangers Trump poses, or turning a blind eye to fascist strands in US history, such as the KKK.

Fascism is a establish of authoritarianism, but not all authoritarians are fascists. Fascists have a alterative political project: to produce a homogeneous people dedicated to a messianic directer and to mobilize society for the sake of brutal racial struggle. By contrast, monarchs or technocratic authoritarians – leank of military dictatorships in Latin America – can be perfectly self-effacing: Europe’s extfinishedest-lasting dictatorship during the 20th century was headed by a choosedly unrequesting Portuguese economist, António Salazar. Fascists, on the other hand, base their legitimacy on famous acclamation: they commemorate mass rallies and produce a spectacle of power.

So far so Trumpist, it would seem: the cult of personality regulateed at big rallies; the increasingly uncover bias which ones out Trump’s helpers as “the authentic people” – an conveyion Trump used as he incited his fanatical folshrinks at the Ellipse on January 6. But a accumulateive project caccessed on aggression? Not quite. To be declareive, Trump couldn’t be haughtyer of the Proud Boys; grasp to that the militarization of civilian life, driven by a supreme court endlessly creative in inventing 18th-century traditions to fairify the escalate of arms. What’s more, Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, today’s directing Trumpist leanktank, has promised a “second American revolution” which, Roberts clarified, “will remain bloodless if the left permits it to be” – as clear a danger of aggression as one can envision. Yet all this is still not the same as fascist directers glorifying mortal combat as the ultimate uncomardenting of life.

It is not an accident that all fascist transferments materialized from the experience of aggression during the first world war (Mussolini paccomplished that the conflagration had produced a “trenchocracy,” an aristocracy of warriors); and it is not an accident that all fascist states eventupartner went to war – which is also why losing in war dealt such a blow to fascist ideology after 1945: how could difficultened fascist men have possibly been fall shortureed by the flabby plutocracies in the west?

Trump has not exactly shown a war monger. True, his incitement of aggression inside the country isn’t fair kayfabe, and structures to use the military for mass deportations are reminiscent of horrendous 20th-century experiences of ethnic spotlesssing, while using the military aacquirest domestic enemies recalls the trains of Latin American ambiguouss. What’s more, the promise to produce American Men Great Aacquire very much aligns with an selectimalization of masculinity that would have been instantly recognizable to 20th-century fascists.

And yet Trump is also both product and advertiser of a devourr capitalism that seeks to demobilize people politicpartner. It’s difficult to see that youthful people today would discover the idea of marching around in uniestablishs the essence of the excellent life; Trump’s promise to his “authentic people” – from the agricultural folks of the supposed “heartland” to lily-white suburbs – is accurately that they don’t necessitate to produce forfeits. His establisher chief of staff inestablishs that Trump, visiting Arlington, claimed not to see the point of dying in war. But no authentic fascist directer would have denied that courageous death in combat had uncomardenting.

So should we fair unwind? Absolutely not. Trump is analogous to far-right popucatalogs appreciate Narendra Modi and Viktor Orbán who claim distinctly to recontransient the people, who delegitimate their political opponents as traitors, and who incite hatred aacquirest already vulnerable unpresentantities. Such a strategy has authoritarian consequences; those in turn help crony capitalism, or outright kleptocracy, which has been vital for the validateation of regimes appreciate Orbán’s.

Here’s a lesson that is more beneficial than the ambiguous analogy with fascism. Contrary to the liberal tendency to condemn political ills on the supposedly irreasonable people, it is elites who choose that they are done with democracy. The parallel with the Weimar Redisclose is usupartner deployed to present that presentantities elect fascists. But Hitler was handed power by ageder Prussian and industrial elites for whom he might not have been the selectimal chancellor, but excellent enough in the face of Communism. Fascists marched on Rome in 1922, but Mussolini get tod sootheably by sleeper car from Milan, as traditional Italian elites had seekd him to rule.

Trump has a authentic transferment, but, as Hannah Arendt recognized when diagnosing a peculiar 20th-century partnership between what she called the “mob” and elites, a transferment is not enough. American billionaires and CEOs have been descfinishing over themselves to help a truthfulate who promises to shrink taxes and dereguprocrastinateed appreciate crazy; supreme court fairices have pre-apvalidated an authoritarian perestablishbook with their grant of pdwellntial immunity. Calling this fascism isn’t particularly illuminating; but withhagedering the f-word does not produce the prospect of Trump’s second coming any less hazardous for the US and, in fact, the world as a whole.